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TRIBEWORK is about consuming the process of life, the journey, together.

Monday, April 8, 2013

Run, Fight or Stand?

Options regarding responses in
life many times seem limited, especially by the default of personality wired
within us. Some of us, by instinct, run. Others fight. And then again, others
simply stand. It is standing in the midst of grappling situations that is most
at home to the wisdom of God. But it doesn’t seem a natural response at
all—most people who respond this way have learned
to respond this way. Either that, or they have been blessed with some
assertiveness gene; most of the time, however, assertiveness is a learned
trait.

When we are placed under pressure,
what will we do? What will characterise our response? Do we run, or do we
fight, or do we stand?

A Learned Behaviour – Operating Out Of
Assertiveness

When the time has come to stand up
and be counted, by neither submission nor aggression, how will we know we will
actually stand? How can we confidently know we won’t falter?

The only way we can reliably react
by standing and neither running nor fighting is if we have reacted that way
time and time again. We become known by how we are characterised. We can say we
have learned something when we reliably do it.

Becoming characterised by an
assertive response, where we respond by simply standing, and neither running
nor fighting, is both learned and practiced. The only way to do it is to stop
running and stop fighting.

This is where the difficult work
begins.

If we are so used to running or
fighting going into another mode of response may be one of the biggest
challenges of learning we will ever approach. But relearning behavioural ways
of operating is not only possible, it is actually likely that new approaches
will stick, if we practice them often enough.

When we recognise that neither
running nor fighting achieves much, because our lives are so contingent on
relational outcomes, we recognise the wisdom in simply standing.

Sometimes no action is the best
action of all. Sometimes we need to get out of the way of God in order to let
God work in situations, especially the ones beyond us. This isn’t to say that
we sit on our hands, but it is about not acting until we know the right course of action, for the right
time, and how to do it in the right way.

***

Tests in life come at
unpredictable times, and the best thing we can do when we are tempted to either
run or fight is to simply stand. We await further orders from God. Only when we
know God’s will are we blessed to carry it out.